A mock-up of the planned east-west cycle route.
Photograph: Transport for London

There is a battle being fought, right now, over the future of our towns and cities, one focused on London but with repercussions that will be felt nationwide. At its heart is a simple choice: should significant road space be taken away from motorised vehicles in favour of bikes?

Proposed route of London east-west cycle superhighway, with Hyde Park on the far left and the Tower of London on the far right Illustration: TFL

Unlike the TfL’s original half-baked “superhighways”, these routes, also known as “Crossrail for the bike”, will be almost entirely segregated, based largely on the sort of Dutch- or Danish-style infrastructure so long demanded by cycling groups.

While they have some caveats, most bike groups and similar organisations, as well as some businesses, have welcomed the planned routes, which are supposed to open in early 2016, shortly before Johnson leaves office.

But massed against the plans as they stand is a fearsome and powerful group, chiefly the officials who run the City, London’s financial district, motoring organisations and a series of corporations.

If you’re interested in the future of transport in urban Britain it’s hard to overstate the importance of the this rumbling confrontation.

If the new bike routes go ahead much as planned they could not just give a significant shift towards more – and much safer – cycling in London but act as a viable model for the rest of the country.

But of they’re derailed, or greatly watered-down, or kicked into the long grass of endless consultation, the game is up for some years.

These are proposals put forward by a famously pro-business and pro-City Conservative mayor who enjoys significant (if, to some, mysterious) political renown and clout. They were planned amid a climate shaped by a horrible spate of deaths among London cyclists which illustrated how desperate the need to segregate bikes from motorised traffic. If not now, then possibly not for a long time.

There are two forms of opposition. The more open sort comes from usual suspects like the RAC Foundation, which talked of the bulk of London traffic being “essential” and questioned whether the cost – which amounts to £10 per person per year – was “value for money”.

More nuanced is the business opposition, which has been disparate in voice but with a remarkably unified message: we support the superhighways in principle, but we want more time to work out the details.

Among these is the unnamed head of a major City employer, who told the Evening Standard anonymously that the plans, as they stand, were “an absolute mess”, which would “cause gridlock”.

Such as view has been most consistently expressed by the Corporation of the City of London, which runs the financial district.

Its formal response to the superhighway plans said it backed them in principle, but nonetheless carried dire warnings as to the impact on pedestrians and drivers, and about vehicle access to some addresses.

Mark Treasure, who writes the As Easy as Riding a Bike blog, has written a through and effective rejoinder to the City’s view, pointing out that their fears over traffic chaos and pedestrian panic seem hugely overblown.

I had a chat on Monday with Michael Welbank, chairman of planning committee for Corporation of London, who led its response to the superhighway plans.

He insisted the corporation supported not just the principle of the bike lanes, but the specific idea of them being, as planned, almost wholly segregated.

That was, however, about as comforting as it got. Welbank said the City saw the six-and-a-half week formal consultation process as “insulting”. He said:

It’s gone through in a tremendous rush. In my view it’s a ridiculous timetable, which has eliminated the idea of consultation.

He refused to be drawn on what particular changes the City might seek, and whether they might be major or minor:

We think it’s a good idea to have cycle routes through the city. Of course that’s a good idea. But until you sit down with all the different parties you don’t know how it can be worked out in satisfactory detail to everybody. That’s what we concerned about.

Such sentiments arguably make any plea of support for the plans in principle a bit meaningless. From my reading the Corporation is likely to be pushing for more than just tweaks. Welbank said he feared the plans as they stood would increase pollution through more vehicle congestion and badly affect access to some business areas. Overall, he said, the scheme was badly thought out:

All road users should have equal opportunities. At the moment [with these plans] we believe the cyclists are having priority to the disadvantage of other users.

This, to me, is a key point, and a sign of how worrying is the opposition. If you take away a lane of traffic from motor vehicles – and let’s remember that on Lower Thames Street, the currently fast and thundering route about which the Corporation has expressed most concern, this is one lane of four – you are shifting priorities towards cyclists. But that it precisely the point.

If you decide the hegemony of motor vehicles is ultimately destructive for a city and its inhabitants, whereas cyclists cause many fewer problems, then there’s an element of carrot and stick. Disincentivising drivers in big cities, even in London, is nothing new – just think of the congestion charge. But every time someone abandons their car for a bike, everyone benefits. In fact, if sufficient non-essential vehicles are removed then there is more space for others on those three lanes of motor traffic.

Welbank was keen to talk up the City’s bike-friendly activities, for example its blanket 20mph speed limit, and schemes to allow bikes to filter down one-way street.

These are all admirable, but in the grand scheme of things mere tinkering. London currently has a relatively small population of cyclists who are predominantly young and gung-ho enough to mix it with the traffic. Older people and children are almost unknown. Only one thing can change this – segregation.

And in a city with some of the worst pollution in Europe and an estimated direct and indirect cost of obesity of almost £900m per year – about the same as Johnson’s entire cycling plans over a decade – the case for mass cycling is overwhelming. Cycling (or walking) to work is even shown to make you happier, according to a report published on Monday.

It is against this backdrop that the City’s near-unified calls for delay and alteration must be measured. There are, undoubtedly, elements of the routes that need tweaking. But my worry is the corporation’s as-yet unspecified demands would both significantly water down their effectiveness, and push the timetable way beyond 2016, with all the consequences that would bring.

The era of the car-clogged city is over. The impact is too high. It’s a paradox that the City, and London’s wider business community, a sector which so prides itself on being modern and cutting-edge, is in this case so backward and lacking in vision. They are living in the past. They just haven’t realised it yet.

A quick additional note:

Since this piece was published, the cycle blogger Danny Williams has pointed me to this, which shows that the Barts NHS Trust, which employs 15,000 people across six London sites, and tends to around 2.5m people, has today come out very strongly in favour of the scheme.